


Gwenvid Week 2018

by CaffeinatedWriter



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, MomGwen, Tumblr Prompt, dadvid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-03 23:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15829164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedWriter/pseuds/CaffeinatedWriter
Summary: Six fics as inspired by the 2018 Gwenvid Week prompts on tumblr.





	1. 10 Years Earlier

At the end of the day, it’s all David’s fault.

Gwen had been fully prepared to spend the summer the way she had the past couple summers: stealing theatre box candy from the dollar mart down the block and binge watching old seasons of The Bachelorette.

She’s getting her braces off this year, miraculously just in time for the start of high school and she fully intended not to be seen by another human being for the three months in between for the full effect. How can she have her movie worthy reveal without the dramatics of falling off the face of the earth for a while? How will she ever find her storybook romance?

The answer is that she can’t and David is stealing that from her.

Gwen doesn’t know much of anything about Camp Campbell other than that David hated it up until he was ten and now he’s the oldest kid there. Well, one of the oldest kids there she has to correct, glaring out the window of the bus as they begin to pass less signs of civilization and more god damn trees.

This is a nightmare.

“Gosh, Gwen. I’m so excited you’re coming to camp this year!” David tells her, bouncing in the seat beside her. She hasn’t said a word since this morning when he’d come bounding up to her step like an excited puppy, taking her bag without being asked and tossing it into the back of his mom’s old beat up car with his own.

They’re a matching set, a joint Christmas gift from years ago when sleepovers had been a bigger affair than they were now. Now, Gwen usually didn’t even bother bringing over a change of clothes when she spent the night, comfortable enough in one of his shirts and a pair of shorts that survived David’s short stint on their middle school basketball team.

Not that it mattered anymore because Gwen was totally never going to speak to David again!

She grits her teeth and smushes herself closer to the window. Knowing her luck, camp was going to fuck up her teeth even more regardless of how little sense that made. Tears bubble up and she blinks them away, jamming the meat of her palm into her eye to stop whatever ridiculous shit is happening.

No way was she going to cry like a fucking baby on a bus full of actual children.

Never mind that she was going to enter high school the same boring trainwreck. Never mind that three months in the woods in the company of literal fetus’ was only going to push her even more out of the loop.

Wetness runs down the makeshift barrier of her hand, dripping traitorously onto her thigh and dampening the fabric of her shorts.

“Gwen?”

She whips around to face him like a maniac, fully prepared to tear into him for this horrible thing that he’s done to her but the look on his face stops her dead in her tracks. The heartbreak, for her, and the concern as he confirms that she was in fact crying about going to summer camp like a whiny loser.

Gwen’s heart skips a beat.

Summers always had felt lacking with David’s absence but that didn’t mean she wanted to be out here. When Gwen had casually brought up the idea that they spend the summer together this year, it had been with the thought that he’d be right next to her, disappointed in the lack of respect that the season’s perspective candidates were showing the bachelorette and running in to leave money for the candy she’d taken.

Never in a million years would she have taken his surprise and excitement at the idea to mean he was going to her parents and suggesting Gwen might like to spend the summer at Camp Campbell, though maybe she should have knowing exactly who David is as a person. And of course, her parents were always harping about her getting out of the house during the summer.

Something about fresh air and not moping.

“Gwen, are you alright?” he asks, quieter now and reaching a hand out to rest on her thigh. He scoots closer until their sides are pressed together and she wants to be angry about it but David has always been a comforting presence. 

He always means well, even if that was what got them into this mess in the first place.

“David, I hate camping,” she says, voice embarrassingly distorted through the sniffling that’s unavoidable with obvious crying. He frowns and she regrets saying it instantly. Frowning looks wrong on David’s face.

“I know but…I thought you wanted to spend the summer together?” He sounds so confused and a little sad like maybe he’d come to a realization. Gwen doesn’t want to know what that realization is or whether it’s true.

Her fingers clench at the fabric of her shorts and she lets out a watery laugh. This is the worst.

“Yeah, but I meant like, at home? With me. I don’t know, it was fucking stupid.”

“Gwen, there are kids on this bus,” he whispers, scandalized. His nose scrunches up in the closest thing David ever seems to get to annoyance and she’s overcome with the desire to kiss it until his face softens back up. Like in the stories she reads, buried deep within folders inside folders on her laptop.

The thought brings a blush to her cheeks, burning and shameful. David is her best friend and this is exactly the wrong time and place to evaluate these sorts of thoughts.

“Camp Campbell is important to me,” he says, interrupting her internal freakout. She sighs.

“I know, I-”

“And you’re important to me,” he interrupts which is so entirely out of character for David that she doesn’t know what to say in response. Doesn’t say anything as he looks more and more nervous. “I knew you didn’t want to come to camp with me, Gwen. But I was just so excited to have both my favorite things at once, I didn’t think about your feelings. It was selfish of me, I’m sorry.”

She gapes. Not at the apology; David has never been one to deny when he was wrong. Never let anything like pride stop him from apologizing when apology was deserved. David’s too good and Gwen doesn’t know what to do with it sometimes.

No, what’s shocking to her is that David considers their relationship to be equal to his love of camp.

David is a bundle of optimism and driven by the idea that he is capable of bringing good into the lives of people who need it most and Gwen’s just..Gwen. His childhood friend who complains about the same people she’s desperate to integrate into and is petty enough to ignore his excited babbling the entire thirty minute bus ride because he dared to want to spend time with her.

She’s the one who’s been selfish. She’s the one who should apologize.

“I’m important to you?” she says instead because she’s an idiot.

“Of course you are,” he answers softly like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. They turn towards each other at the same time, knees knocking together but she ignores it in favor of searching for something in his eyes that indicates this is some sort of joke.

But of course it’s not. David’s idea of a joke is complimenting her before dissolving into giggles and admitting that really, he thinks she’s even better than the compliment implied. Because David genuinely thinks she’s something worth getting excited about.

Summer camps always did make the best setting for a storybook romance.

“David…”

“Hey, are you two going to kiss?” interrupts the grating voice of some kid, peering over the back of his seat to stare at them with big, interested eyes. 

Gwen jerks back, smacking her head against the window and David startles, reaching out instinctively. She smacks his hand away and glares at the kid for interrupting their frankly too public moment.

“Hey, fuck off, kid. Mind your own business!” she barks and David makes a noise of protest but the kid doesn’t stay to see what happens, ducking back into his seat with a yelp.

“Gwen, that wasn’t-”

“What camp did you sign us up for?” she asks, cutting him off before he can fall fully into lecture mode. The kid is on her shitlist and she’s not interested in being told off for his mistake.

Embarrassingly enough, she had crumpled up the form and thrown it at him when he’d come by last week to get them officially signed up for this shit. Told him to figure it out himself and slammed the door to go angry cry in front of the mirror.

“Oh!” He rubs the back of his head like he’s embarrassed and Gwen laughs, smacking his leg playfully.

“Not something stupid, right? Please tell me it isn’t like, underwater basket weaving. Or frisbee golf or…I dunno, the importance of communication.” Admittedly, she could probably stand to gain something from that last one.

“Counselor in training,” he admits shyly, biting his lip the way he does when he’s nervous about something. It’s distracting and so her eyes definitely stray there for just a little too long but she manages to pull herself away.

“David, seriously?”

“You like telling  _me_  what to do; I thought you’d like it!” he defends, putting his hands up defensively. She grabs one, hyper aware as their fingers instinctively tangle together.

“You’re going to get me stuck at this camp for the rest of my life, aren’t you?” she accuses but it’s hard to keep the fondness out of her voice. The only thing she can think of that’s worse than spending three months in the woods is spending three months in the woods responsible for the lives of a handful of children.

“With me!” David adds, not even trying to deny the accusation.

She feels him squeeze her hand and all the fight drains out of her. Slumping back into the seat, she feels him do the same and they sit in a comfortable silence, hands still clasped between them like they’re back in elementary school.

At the end of the day, it’s all David’s fault. But, as always, they’re in this together.


	2. Stars

David comes home with an armful of paint cans and a look of determination that wavers the second he realizes Gwen is home.

She looks up at him from her magazine on the couch, amused as determination turns to guilt in a flash and beckons him further into the apartment. He complies with far less enthusiasm than he arrived with but doesn’t scramble to offer a defense as she pries open one of the larger cans.

It’s a deep, dark blue that reminds Gwen of the night sky back at camp where the city lights don’t pollute the view.

They don’t have the money for something like this and David’s usually the responsible one with money.

“Max will like it,” she comments casually, looking up from the paint with a small smile she hopes is reassuring.

“Gwen…”

She stands, crossing her arms under her chest. He’s internalizing some sort of guilt that she’d really rather not let fester but she’s not sure how to stop this before it begins.

“You move all the furniture out and I’ll start taping it off,” she says, moving to dig through their kitchen island. Beyond the fact that their kitchen island mysteriously contains a warehouse worth of random shit, she vaguely remembers them having to paint years ago when they first moved in.

Sure enough, she uncovers a mostly unused roll of painters tape under packs of nails and yard sale stickers even though they’ve never had a yard sale.

“Gwen-” David starts again, unmoved from his spot.

She sighs. It’d really have been preferable if this didn’t need to become a discussion but of course, David is a perfect boyfriend and all around good person and communication was his middle fucking name.

“Look. You know we can’t afford all this paint and I know we can’t. But it’s for Max, right? So…we’ll make it work. We just might have to eat a lot of pasta for the next week,” she tells him like it isn’t exactly the same thing that ran through his head when he was buying the damn paint.

David is not irresponsible as much as he is overly considerate of other people. Gwen knows if they really couldn’t safely take the hit, he wouldn’t have done it. It seems like David himself isn’t being as forgiving.

“I just want him to feel at home,” David says and Gwen gets it.

It’s not easy with David still in school and Gwen in whatever low standards job she’s holding down at the moment. They aren’t drowning in spare cash. Haven’t got the means to really make Max feel like this isn’t just him chilling in their spare bedroom until they figure out what to do with him.

“Then you need to start moving the furniture out because I for one am not going to get bitched out by an eleven year old because we got paint on his shitty second-hand bed frame,” she says, waving the roll of tape at him.

They stare at each other in silence for a moment where Gwen thinks she might actually have to sit David down before his face is overtaken by the literal embodiment of sunshine and she is reminded just why she fell for this idealistic boy.

David explains his concept as they pull apart Max’s bed and start lugging it into the main area of the apartment. She folds his sheets and sets them aside to be washed while they paint, overcome by how much of a parent she feels like in this moment despite feeling too much like a child herself.

She’s not Max’s mom. She’s not anyone’s mom; she can’t even keep any of her plants alive but she thinks maybe this isn’t nothing either.

David smiles at her, honest and open like he knows exactly what she’s thinking and she smacks him on the hip with a paintbrush, ducking to hide the blush that she refuses to admit is enveloping her face.

Gwen tapes off the baseboards and around the outlets while David finishes carting out the rug and the desk, taking note of the way he gently places Max’s frumpy bear at the top of the pile to scrutinize them safely from just outside the door.

“He’s supervising,” David says, shooting the most disgustingly fond look at the bear that Gwen recognizes from the times she’s caught him staring at Max when he falls asleep on the couch or in the car. And she’s not sure why but it’s only then that she really recognizes that they’re doing this. Broke, in their twenties, not quite stable themselves in adulthood but they’re taking in this tiny person who relies on them no matter how much he insists otherwise.

But fuck, they’ve practically raised Max anyways. Summer to summer. This is just that but more.

She struggles with the cluster of old magazines they’re using as makeshift tarp to protect the floor while David runs to throw Max’s sheets in the laundry room downstairs. He comes back with the paint, pouring it out into a pan and offering her a brush. Their fingers brush with the exchange and she watches David flush now, bright red and too endearing.

“We’ve been dating for a while now,” she mentions as he starts laying out the blue on the ceiling. Physically, her focus is on the edges around the outlet where she’s laying her own paint but she’s hyper aware of the way he jumps slightly at the comment.

“Yeah…” he answers and Gwen can just bet the blush is still there. She smirks. “I’m sorry.”

She freezes. That’s not really what she was expecting and she finally looks up. The blush is definitely still there but the look on his face doesn’t compliment it well.

“Hey, no, what’s up? What’s there to be sorry about?”

“Everything with Max happened so fast and then you had to give up your room and-”

“David!” she cuts him off, in disbelief that he’d been fixating on this without her knowing. David, who had to talk through everything the instant it was an issue. David, who lectured her about bottling up her feelings on the regular. “We were already dating. We talked about this…do you not want to share a bedroom?”

“No!” His lack of hesitation and the urgency with which he says it really does something for her ego. He finally turns to look at her and there’s something so unfamiliar in what she sees. “But you like having your own space.”

She barks out a laugh. It’s an understatement. Gwen’s not like David. She can’t be part of the grand scheme of other people 24/7 without a sign of wearing. But, well, David isn’t the grand scheme and neither is Max. They’re her…boys. Home could be that place just as well.

It’s hard to convey that to David though. Hard to explain that she loves him and she loves Max and these two things are related to each other but they existed on their own too.

“Max needs his own space too,” she says instead but it doesn’t seem to convince him. “Look, couples get to this point. Or they break up beforehand but that’s not the point. It was going to end up like this anyways, David. And I’m glad it did. You know, even though you’re a fucking octopus.”

A total lie. If anything, Gwen’s the one seeking out warmth in the night but like fuck she’d admit that in the midst of what is already an overly drawn out heart to heart.

“You’re too good, Gwen,” David says softly, back to painting the ceiling and as Gwen stares up at him with something like awe, she thinks he really does mean it.

“We did this all in the wrong order,” she mumbles, “You’re suppose to sleep together and  _then_  have a kid.”

“Gwen!” he shouts, so apparently scandalized that he fumbles the roller and almost kicks over the bucket of paint between his feet. She smirks, pleased that he had reacted exactly the way she knew he would. There was something truly fantastic about dating your best friend.

It’s hours and two coats later but they somehow manage to get the room back together before Max is home.

Her instinct had been spot on, of course. Leave it to David to paint a nightscape reminiscent of camp for a boy who swore he hated nothing more. But looking at the finished product, a tiny pine tree forest hand painted along the baseboards, it’s subtle enough that even Max wouldn’t be able to find fault in it.

She hopes at least. They know Max best out of most but it feels like in recent days, she doubts more and more what she knows to be true about the little monster. Being wrong feels like such a bigger deal now.

It’s missing something though. She feels it and instantly she remembers. Popping into their room while David collects the leftover paint to drag downstairs later, she digs through the mess that is her bag until she finds the box.

They’re shitty. It was an impulse buy and Gwen knows in a month, they’re not going to glow anymore but after Max had mentioned (offhandedly and with all the attitude of a kid not use to being listened to) his discomfort of being alone in the dark, she’d felt compelled to seek them out.

The stars come in various sizes and adhere with some sort of cheap foam sticker. In reality, they’re probably not going to last long enough to lose their glow but she doesn’t hesitate laying them out along the ceiling and down the corners of the walls anyways.

Admiring her handiwork, she doesn’t even notice David come back until he’s wrapping his arms around her waist.

“When did you get those?” he asks into her shoulder, brushing his lips ever so slightly against the exposed skin he finds there. She rests her hands on top of his and allows herself to just enjoy the sensation of being there together like they haven’t since confessions at the end of camp.

“Impulse buys are my thing, mister. Don’t fucking steal my thunder,” she teases. “If anyone is going to bankrupt us to buy Max shit he doesn’t need, it’s going to be me.”

David hums, though whether it’s agreement or acknowledgement, she’s not quite sure. Either way, it’s nice.

They’re laying on Max’s floor, cooling down from their afternoon of excitement when the apartment door gives the telltale slam of a bitchy preteen with an attitude problem.

“Why is Mr. Honeynuts out here!” Max demands from the main area of the apartment where David had left the stuffed bear on the island while they dragged all the furniture back in and remade the bed. She turns to look at him but if he’s as nervous as she is, he doesn’t show it.

David has no doubts about Max’s reaction. She doesn’t think it comes from naivety either or the misplaced optimism he’s prone to at camp.

David just knows Max. She lets that ground her. Gwen knows Max too.

“Hey, assholes! Go lay on your own flo-” he stops in the doorway, eyes wide as he takes in the walls. His stupid bear is clutched tightly in his arms, protectively even, and Gwen feels her heart melt in a way she’d otherwise find vaguely disgusting.

She pats the ground between them but still finds herself a little surprised when he wordlessly comes to sit, bear clutched in his lap.

“What?” he asks, searching, and she can hear the minute crack in his voice. Gwen feels like there’s more than one question in that one word and it’s heartbreaking to think that a little bit of paint means so much. It reminds her too much of David at Max’s age and that’s not something they’re suppose to think about anymore.

She just can’t grasp the injustice of the universe sometimes.

“Like it?” David asks, pushing himself up to sit and gently coercing the boy to lean against him. He’s only been here for a little over a week so Gwen still isn’t sure at what point that became an acceptable action. Only that is must have happened some time in the months and months that David was keeping her out of the loop.

She’s angry in that moment but they’ve already had that talk. And she knows that the anger comes from a misplaced feeling that she doesn’t belong. In her own house. In her own little makeshift family that she cobbled together with the pieces of David his parents couldn’t destroy.

It’s ridiculous.

“So fucking stupid. You idiots. Didn’t need it,” she hears Max mumble, voice wavering.

Gwen doesn’t like the way forcibly contained tears sound on Max. His carefully crafted, unfazed by anything masquerade that prevented him from being able to say what he meant.

She places a hand gently on his head, threading fingers through the entity of curls that was his hair and pointing out the cluster of stars closest to his bed.

“That’s Canis Major. And the biggest star is Sirius. It’s suppose to be ominous and shit but so are you so…it’ll protect you. Don’t ever say we never got you a dog,” Gwen explains, tracing out the constellation in the air with her free hand.

Max snorts, subtly moving to lean against Gwen and follow her finger’s movement. David thinks he’s sly but Gwen definitely notices as he scoots closer, sandwiching Max ever so gently between them.

“Another useless degree?”

The dig stings more than it should when he means it half as much as he has in the past.

“I found something that made me happy,” she answers, trying hard to keep the defense out of her tone but she feels Max tense anyways. It leaves her feeling terrible. Like she failed. Again.

“Me too,” David interjects and just like that, the tension snaps and the two of them groan in horror. She shoves at David playfully, squishing Max even more in the process. He yelps, complaining about nothing just to complain.

David laughs, genuine and fond and Max does some kind of half laugh under his breath and Gwen doesn’t feel out of the loop.

None of them really know what they’re doing. They’re not knowing together.


	3. Parents

Gwen hates David’s parents.

She hates them on that first day of middle school when she meets a lanky ginger boy with a stupid ass smile who talks about camp like it’s some sort of hidden paradise he can’t wait to retreat back to.

It doesn’t take but a day for David to be the target of everyone’s misguided lack of self-esteem. Because he’s unwaveringly happy and optimistic to the most ridiculous degree and middle school is the land of the recently jaded.

Cool is caring too much and claiming you don’t at all and David isn’t capable of that for a second.

He’s the joke that laughs along with itself because he’s too idealistic to realize everyone thinks he’s weird. That Gwen thinks he’s weird even as he gravitates towards her in everything throughout the day after they’re sat together for the ten minutes of homeroom.

At lunch, he coerces Gwen into a conversation about her room that somehow ends with her leading him to her house after school. Or rather, him trailing behind her like a baby duck after he all but invites himself over.

Gwen is sure she’s being manipulated but perhaps the reality is that under all the weird, David is actually incredibly endearing.

He listens when Gwen talks. Actually listens and responds and doesn’t talk over her even when he knows more about whatever they’re talking about than she does. When she backtracks every five minutes with the socially appropriate dismissal of interest, he encourages her to continue like her opinion on Pokemon is a life changing topic that needs to be brought to the light.

It’s nice but something about it seems off.

When they finally make it to Gwen’s house, they’re met by her mom at the door and David freezes. It reminds Gwen of the next door neighbor’s cat that kids in the neighborhood like to throw rocks at. The one that understandably doesn’t much care for children.

Gwen’s mom smiles at David who doesn’t respond other than to remain frozen in front of her. She asks Gwen about her day and they chat lightly for a minute or two before her mom excuses herself, disappearing into the little office attached to the living room.

“Why’s your mom here?” he asks quietly, staring intensely in the direction the woman had just left in.

She remembers thinking he just meant now, in the middle of the afternoon.

“Oh, she works from home. She likes being around. Kinda embarrassing, right?” she answers, laughing but it trails off awkwardly when he doesn’t join in. Instead, he turns his stare to Gwen and she’ll never forget it for the rest of her life.

He looked sad. Worse, he looked scared. Like he’d realized something and Gwen hadn’t known it at the time but that might be the very moment David really understood things weren’t quite right in his house.

“Do your parents work a lot?” she asks curiously, uncomfortable under the weight of this unbefitting look on David’s face. She hasn’t known him but a day and she can already tell, something about this is very wrong.

“I don’t know. They’re not home a lot,” he says, biting his lip so hard, Gwen’s a little afraid he’s going to break through.

“But who makes you dinner?”

“I do?” he answers, like he’s not sure it’s the right answer.

“Oh.” Stupid. A stupid response. “But…laundry? Mom says I have to learn this year but she’ll still do it for me.”

David’s face is heartbreaking. It’s making Gwen’s stomach hurt and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

“You can come here for dinner. Whenever you want. Dad always makes too much anyways so…” she trails off. A couple hours ago, she was avoiding eye contact with him in gym. Hoping the world’s brightest bundle of sunshine didn’t notice her in the hall between classes like he wouldn’t find her once the bell rang and they were sat in the same room.

David is so happy and Gwen is starting to wonder how when he’s clearly capable of so much sad.

“Tell me about your camp again,” she demands, grabbing his hand and leading him upstairs. His hand is warm and calloused from whatever nature bullshit he’d been doing the last three months and like that, he’s the lanky ginger boy with the stupid smile again.

As her bedroom door closes, he launches into another story about somewhere called Camp Campbell and Gwen’s mind wanders to the type of parents who ‘aren’t home a lot’.

She doesn’t like them very much.

—-

Gwen hates David’s parents.

She hates them when David meets a boy their sophomore year that makes his face light up like it only ever does when he talks about camp. Who holds his hand leaning against their lockers between classes and pulls his lip out from under his teeth when he’s nervous, kissing away the bite marks.

It’s a conflicting time.

Gwen doesn’t much care for this boy although she can’t pinpoint why. He’s charming as hell and a nice enough dude. Never says anything less than decent to Gwen even when she pulls David away at the end of the day in the middle of what is surely some sort of convincing argument to come make out in his truck.

David is so happy and even she can’t find fault in that. Won’t allow herself to find fault in it because Gwen could find fault in anything if she was given the chance.

When it comes down to it, David is more important than some mysterious, unidentifiable feeling.

His parents, to her knowledge, had never paid attention to anything he did before so she can’t explain the way she feels when David ends up on her doorstep at eleven o’clock at night with tears dripping down his cheeks and a bruise on the side of his face so purple, it looks black.

“David,” she whispers, grabbing him by the hands because she doesn’t know what she’d do with her own otherwise.

He’s gasping too much to respond and she drags him inside, making calming noises in the hopes that he’ll quiet or she’ll drown him out as they speed past her parents’ room. She pulls him to cradle against her chest, careful of his bruising cheek, and tugs all the blankets she can reach around them to form a secure cocoon.

“Shh, David. It’s fine. You’re fine. You’re okay,” she chatters because she’s pretty sure if she stops talking, the erratic beating of her heart will drown out everything.

It’s twenty minutes before his sobs turn to the occasional hitched breath. Until he’s calm, pressed tight against Gwen, fingers buried in the loose fabric of her night shirt. Her fingers trace shapes into his back like her parents did when she was upset as a kid. An anchor to the right now.

“They don’t want a…someone like me. For a son,” David says finally into the darkness of Gwen’s room.

Gwen knows exactly what it is they told David they didn’t want for a son.

“You don’t need someone like them for parents,” Gwen counters, angry. Stops herself from saying that they never were parents to begin with because the topic only ever serves to make David quiet.

It’s a long night. They fall asleep curled together and for once, Gwen lets David be the little spoon without complaint or tease.

The next day, Gwen covers up the bruise the best she can with her less than ideal foundation skills before school and David pulls his boyfriend aside with a soft, apologetic smile just before the bell.

“We can’t date anymore,” Gwen overhears from her position a few lockers away, totally not spying. It can be excused after the night they had, she thinks.

Her heart breaks for the hundredth time in David’s honor and she shakes from the sheer rage that bubbles up, burning her chest like acid. And the worst part of all is that the other boy just nods in easy agreement.

Part of Gwen gets it. The rational part. It’s not like they were in love. They’d only been hanging out for a few weeks and that was the reality of high school. But he made David so happy. Genuinely, disgustingly, camp levels of happy.

It shouldn’t end like this. Not with an unwarranted smile. Not without any question.

He may not love David but he should care. Should care about the choice of the word ‘can’t’. Should just  _fucking_ ** _care_**.

David slides up to her side after they part, linking their arms together and she does her best to control the shaking.

“Oh, buck up Gwen! What’s one high school romance? My soulmate is out there somewhere,” he consoles her. Consoles her, like she’s the one having to deny a whole part of herself because of shitty parents who decided to pay attention for once at the exact wrong moment.

“You deserve the best person, David,” she says in a rare moment of sincerity. “Whoever that person is.”

“I’ve got the best person right here! And I know two people who are going to make the day so much better after school,” he says with a tired smile as they walk arm in arm to class.

“Ben and Jerry?” she wagers a guess.

“Ben and Jerry,” he agrees.

Ben and Jerry fixes a lot of things. It’s their cure-all for bad days and tough weeks and long months but Gwen thinks David’s parents might be the one thing ice cream can’t fix.

She’s not sure if anything can.

—-

Gwen hates David’s parents.

She hates them when David’s face flashes with recognition as Max falls apart before them, insisting that they don’t listen. That his parents don’t give a fuck and they never did with the implication that they could never understand.

Max will never know how intimately David understands.

David gives her a look and she knows what they’re going to do without either of them ever having to exchange a word. She’s not shocked as they pull away from camp, leaving the mess of Parent’s Day to Campbell. She’s not though this is entirely out of character for David.

Max is special to David. She picks up on that easily and now she wonders if David had suspected this. If their supposed similarities had led him to this uneasy conclusion. If he’d doubted himself on it the way he still doubts that his own parents did anything wrong.

Later, when they’re back from their momentary escape from camp and shit parents and the cruelty of the world as a whole, Gwen slides into David’s bed to spoon up behind him as the sound of crickets chirping fills the night air.

They’re silent for a while even though Gwen can feel that David is still awake.

“Are you okay?” she asks finally when it’s obvious he’s not going to say anything.

“Oh gosh, Gwen. I’m not the one who’s not okay,” he sighs, hand finding hers where it’s slung around his stomach.

She thinks of a hundred different ways to say that it’s okay if he’s not. That David’s feelings, his experiences, didn’t invalidate Max or overshadow the concern David felt for him. She tries to think of a way to say it that would push past David’s ideology that everyone on earth came before himself.

“He’s such a good kid. It’s not fair,” David whispers before she can find the words she needs.

It’s the most honest he’s been in a long time.

“You know that’s not how it works. Kids don’t earn bad parents. Nobody deserves that,” she says, hugging him closer and taking comfort in the way he accepts her comfort so willingly.

David does mental acrobatics trying to justify injustice because he just refuses to fathom that people could be out to hurt him intentionally or otherwise, that he doesn’t deserve it in some way. He doesn’t allow himself to think that way in regards to Max.

Not with this.

As David falls asleep, Gwen muses over the fact that she somehow managed to do the impossible. She never thought she’d find someone she hates as much as David’s parents.

Max’s parents proved her wrong.

—-

Gwen hates David’s parents.

She hates them when David idolizes Campbell for paying him the slightest bit of attention, only ever when he needs something.

She hates them when David looks at Max with openly tragic eyes at the end of camp.

She hates then for every fucking letter they send, once a year to guilt David for cutting contact, like it wasn’t something that tore him up inside.

She hates them.

The only thing they ever did right was bring David into the world and their record ends there. Everything that David had, that David was, was a product of his own determination. His own efforts.

David is the most important person in Gwen’s life. He’s an idiot and she loves him. She loves him so much, she thinks it’s going to burst out of her one day. A flood of all the joy and hurt and rage that makes up their past, present, and future.

Gwen’s not sure if they’re ever going to stop stumbling upon new reasons for her to hate his parents but she sure as hell knows that she’ll be the one wading through the wreckage of the damage they’ve done.

She’s not sure she really believes in soulmates but she’s prepared to try to be the best person.

They’ll meet somewhere in the middle because Gwen hates David’s parents but she loves David.


	4. Autumn

David is not ashamed to say that their entire relationship is untraditional to its core.

He’s not clear whether that’s a product of both of them being very much not straight or if it’s just the way their personalities meld but the truth is, David’s happiest with Gwen as they are and he wouldn’t trade it for all the cliche Hollywood romances in the world.

Max had joked, back in the beginning when he’d discovered the shift in their relationship and been around enough to witness how they worked together, that Gwen was  _his_  boyfriend. Needless to say, David had taken it as an opportunity to discuss the effects of toxic gender roles which had left Max grumpy but overall noticeably more comfortable in the apartment.

The way he and Gwen operate works for them. For the family they’re making out of an equally untraditional little boy. In all things, they’re equal and so it really comes to no surprise to him or Gwen that neither of them actually proposes.

For as much as Gwen fantasizes about over the top romance, their path to marriage is a simple one. They discuss it. Plans for the future until one day becomes one day soon and casually tossed out suggestions become cemented decisions.

Then suddenly, they have a date and that’s that.

David’s out of school now and it’s letting them live more comfortably but the reality is that they don’t have fantasy dream wedding money. That’s fine. They’ve always been crafty.

There’s no question of where. It’s obvious. The only place truly befitting of their special day is Camp Campbell. And well, it doesn’t hurt that they now technically own the camp. Saves a whole lot of money for other things like feeding the growing number of people in their lives worth sharing this with.

Gwen is immediately insistent that she doesn’t want a wedding dress. Thousands of dollars on some massive, easily stained dress she’ll never have a reason to wear again extends beyond luxury and into stupidity. According to Gwen herself, of course.

David thinks she’ll look beautiful in anything.

Instead, she finds a cocktail dress with a skirt that spills layers of a translucent fabric. It’s a horrible khaki color that reminds David of the jumpers girls in his elementary school were forced into wearing but they’re nothing if not a family of problem solvers.

Gwen spends an afternoon teaching Max how to mix fabric dye in a plastic rope tub they bought to hold drinks for the Summer Social out on the balcony. They take turns prodding at the fabric with a yardstick miraculously fished from the kitchen island until the dress is a beautiful dark forest green.

Involving Max in the process has been important to both of them since the beginning. The wedding is a celebration of their relationship but it’s a celebration of their family too and that extends to Max’s presence in it.

Which is why when Max snidely congratulates Gwen on her now being the owner of a random green dress, Gwen shoves him into the couch and then agrees that it’s missing something that makes it special.

David digs around the sterilite tower he keeps their arts and craft supplies in until he comes across some gold thread Gwen had bought this past summer when Preston decided the costumes for his play were not sufficiently gaudy. He hands sews little golden pine trees around the hem of the skirt in what Gwen claims is overkill but she smiles soft and pretty as she traces the shapes afterwards.

There will never come a day that Gwen’s smile doesn’t fill him with butterflies.

Neither Max nor David own a proper suit. It’s never been a need and clearly the very idea of it offends Max to his core because the thought of having to spend an afternoon in one sends Max into a full-blown meltdown.

“Calm the fuck down. We don’t have the money for suits,” Gwen huffs, placing corn in front of their ridiculous child to husk as this delightful exchange took place in the middle of making dinner. “And you’d look stupid in one anyways.”

She’s teasing and so he doesn’t call her out on it. They’re both aware how cute Max would be in a full suit. But it’s true that they don’t have the money and regardless, it’s entirely not their style.

The comfort of everyone involved is far more important than what tradition dictates.

Gwen finds them nice button ups in an almost exact match to her dress while hiding from her mother’s insane quest to find her shoes that match her dress but don’t make her taller than David. Like either of them have ever cared about that.

David’s got some cheap, generic black ties from back when he was interviewing with schools. He cuts and hems one down so Max won’t look like he’s playing dress up in his dad’s business attire and then, for the heck of it, he sews matching golden pines into the ties.

Max makes a face when he’s shown their matching accessory but accepts the tie without a snide comment which he takes as the ultimate admission of love.

The day before the big day, Gwen’s mom comes by to steal Max and neither one will tell them what they’re up to. Gwen’s mom just winks when he asks and leads Max away with a hand on the shoulder that the boy seems unbothered by.

David watches them go with unease, sighing when Gwen presses a kiss to his shoulder and smacks him on the hip.

“It’s fine,” she says, moving to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee for this too early weekend morning. “Max is fine with Mom. And she seems to not even realize that he’s the devil so.”

David knows this but it’s not often that Max is away for the day outside of school when David is gone too. Now that he’s not working odd hours, it just doesn’t feel right to not have Max somewhere underfoot in the apartment.

“Mom probably thinks we’re going to have sex,” Gwen mentions offhandedly later in the afternoon when David’s managed to get nothing done but worry.

“Why would she think that?” he asks, blinking when Gwen responds with a small laugh and a cocked eyebrow. “Oh.”

“So dumb. Don’t know why I’m marrying you,” she says full of fondness and pushes him back onto the bed.

Gwen’s mom brings their kid back not a second past five and Max still won’t say what they did, burying his face into David’s leg when David pulls him in for a hug. Gwen asks if they at least had fun and Max shrugs off the question, running off to the bathroom to wash up for dinner.

Max is quiet through dinner and doesn’t complain when David enforces a bedtime even though it’s the weekend.

The next morning, they wake up early and David muses that it doesn’t feel any different than any other day which is to say, he feels lucky and loved.

It takes longer than they plan to get Max out of bed despite how early they all turned in the night before. He seems more withdrawn than usual and David worries that Max has convinced himself of something completely untrue.

The concept isn’t foreign for their family.

Moreover, he’s still half asleep when he comes stumbling out of his room, Mr. Honeynuts tucked under his arm. A less than promising sign. Mr. Honeynuts only leaves Max’s room for camp and when he’s upset about something.

David draws him a bath, worrying his lip with his teeth as Max does not voice his usual pre-bath complaints that he’s not a baby. Crumbling one of Gwen’s less flowery bath bombs into the water, he leaves Max to sleepily soak until breakfast.

“You’re worrying too much,” Gwen tells him, plating up the pancakes she’d been making while David was handling Max. “Max doesn’t handle change well. You know that.”

“But this is a good change,” David argues, looking back at the bathroom door. He loves Gwen. He’s excited that they’re going to be married and he’ll be able to tell people about his  _wife_  but…

“Him coming here was a good change too and that still sucked ass for two months. He’s gonna be twelve, David. All major changes are scary, even for Lord Satan himself,” she dismisses.

Max appears a minute later, wrapped tight in a towel and dripping water onto the floor.

“Morning, bud. You with us finally?” David asks.

“David, you asshole. I smell like cinnamon and pine cones,” Max grumbles.

“Then you’ll fit right in at the wedding.” Gwen says, lightly pushing him towards his bedroom. “Go get dressed and you can have this fucked up pancake that’s suppose to look like a bear.” Max scowls and stares up at her with purpose.

“David does it so much better,” he whispers spitefully.

“I’m gonna tell him you think so,” he hears her whisper back, laughing when Max makes a mad dash to escape to his room.

It’s a long drive to Camp Campbell and they’re not even close to the first people there despite living closer than anyone else. Max wastes no time popping out of the car and running to join Nikki and Neil where they’re climbing a tree outside the counselor cabin.

“You look beautiful, honey,” Gwen’s father compliments, helping her out of the car. David beams.

She really, really does. He hadn’t seen the dress on Gwen, their own version of not seeing the bride until the wedding or, well, wedding day at least. She looks maybe not so much like a bride but definitely something out of David’s dreams.

Gwen’s mother tuts at her choice of shoes. Both of them had chosen to go the way of cleaning up their boots for camp, for money and for ease of walking around camp. It was, they decided, much easier to find Max a nice pair of boots than to look for suitable dress shoes for the three of them.

David thinks they both actually look quite nice, their button ups contrasting against new dark denim disappearing into sturdy boots. Maybe not the fanciest but they certainly look like they belong among the dirt paths and towering woods.

Gwen shoots David an easily read look as her mom repositions herself for the hundredth time, heels sinking into the dirt.

Max comes back with Nikki and Neil trailing behind him. He tugs on the sleeve of Gwen’s mom’s blouse and she smiles, patting Max on the head like he swears he hates but he doesn’t voice that fact now.

“Okay,” she agrees though to what, David doesn’t know because no one has said a word. “Max wants to show you what we did yesterday.”

She leads them over to the tents set up for food later in the evening and a table in the middle which sits the prettiest cake David has ever seen. The bottom tier is a vibrant sky blue with a lush icing pine forest circling the bottom. The tiers gradate up into pinks, and oranges, and finally a dark blue with glimmering speckled stars.

David feels emotion well up in his chest, more so when Gwen tugs Max back against her and he allows it, wrapping a hand around one of her arms.

“Max came up with the design,” Gwen’s mom explains. “I never would have considered something like this for a wedding cake but, well, he insisted this is what you’d want.”

“It’s perfect,” David agrees, voice wavering with emotion.

“Gross,” Max grumbles, averting his eyes. “It’s just a cake, David.” The adults all laugh, much to his obvious displeasure and Gwen releases him to make his escape as the rest of their return campers all arrive at the same time.

The ceremony arrives before they know it and it’s perfect in the way that it’s not.

David had ideally wanted a summer wedding but Gwen had vetoed the idea immediately. They were, she pointed out, obviously going to be working and the last thing she wanted was to be married one day and cleaning paint off the Mess Hall walls the next while Nurf tried to glue Space Kid to the ceiling by his helmet.

Now, he’s thrilled they waited. Beyond the reality that planning a wedding during camp just wasn’t feasible, their backdrop is a plethora of beautiful trees in shades of red and orange and golden brown scattered between the pines.

Leaves fall as they say their vows and David sputters when one manages to fall into his mouth. Their guests all burst into laughter, draining him of his nerves. This, like everything else, is a moment uniquely them shared with their closest friends and family.

Max is practically clinging to him instead of standing in his spot right next to David and he rests a reassuring hand on the boys back as he and Gwen are instructed to kiss. He hears Max make a soft noise of disgust and laughs, tugging the boy between them while he makes a show of fighting and clawing his way out of the hug.

“Mom offered to take Max while we’re on our honeymoon,” Gwen mentions when everyone disperses to eat. David offers her a confused glance.

“We’re taking him with us?” he reminds her. They’d planned that from the very beginning. Family vacations were still a little out of their reach. It seemed infinitely unfair for the first one to be without Max, honeymoon or not.

“I know. I told her as much. Wouldn’t be much of a vacation without our little monster. She told me that wasn’t the point of a honeymoon. But it’s the point of our honeymoon, right?” she continues, soothing his worry that Gwen had had a change of heart about the whole thing.

He’s not sure what he would do if he was made to choose between Gwen and Max. Not sure why the rest of the world seems hellbent on making him do so when they were all happy in the compromise that made up their makeshift family.

“I sure do love you, Gwen,” he tells her like it’s brand new information. It feels that way sometimes. Like every day, he discovers love for her like it’s the first time. Bright and overwhelming and good.

She shoots him an amused smile, linking their fingers together.

“Yeah, you’re pretty alright yourself, David,” she teases and she doesn’t echo the words back but David still hears them loud and clear.

That’s their tradition.


	5. Community Appreciation / Favorite AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is written in [Wicked42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wicked42/pseuds/Wicked42)'s Dadvid in Denver AU and takes place after [Jealousy is a Nasty Motherfucker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15719367/chapters/36540615)

They’re in the middle of their semi-nightly phone call when David suddenly yelps loudly mid-sentence and she hears his voice fading away, calling after someone as a door audibly slams.

“Hi, Max,” she greets, propping her legs up the back of the couch so she’s hanging upside down like she’s sometimes seen Max do when watching TV. “Lock yourself in David’s room?”

God, it’s only been a little over a week since Max’s birthday fiasco but she misses the little demon like crazy. It’s not like she saw him any more frequently than David but at least with David, she heard his voice every couple of days.

Gwen never thought there’d be a day where a week without Max directing attitude at her in some way would be the source of mild heartbreak.

At least during the school year, David would tend to hand the phone off right before the kid went to bed. The exchange rarely extended beyond a quick trading of vulgar names and Gwen, in a moment of unwitnessed softness, telling him ‘good night’ but it’s weird how disconnected she feels from Max without it.

“You’re such a cunt, Gwen,” he answers and Gwen rolls her eyes. Yeah, she really missed this terrible child and honestly, it’s just more of a sign that she must have lost it somewhere between the beginning of camp last year and now.

“I mean, I’m sure but what did I do now, you little shit?” she asks, playing into whatever this newest mood is about. She can hear shuffling as there’s soft banging on the door. Vaguely, she can make out both David and Patrice speaking through the door but it’s silenced after, she assumes, Max moves to David’s closet.

“Left us here with Patrice.” He sounds very accusing as he says it and she can’t help the surprised laugh she lets out.

“Thought you said Patrice is alright?”

Gwen herself, after the short visit and the mortifying first day she’d rather forget, thinks Patrice is amazing. There’s really no one else she’d rather have her kid in the hands of…well, David’s kid. She definitely meant  _David’s_  kid.

He huffs, like she’s a moron.

“I said she was  _annoying_  and it’s fucking true. She’s just so. I mean she. And the thing is…”

“That bad, huh?” Gwen hums in mock sympathy.

“It’s like having two Davids!” he yells and she can hear his tiny hand make contact with the wood as he smacks the floor. “At least when you were here, shit was interesting.”

And honestly, despite Gwen clearing the air between her and Patrice, the admission makes Gwen’s chest warm. Camp Campbell doesn’t need her but it’s nice to know it still wants her. Or, in the very least, that parts of it does.

Which would be great if something in his voice didn’t sound so off.

“Max…do you miss me?” she asks, cautiously. He sputters like an angry cat and she grins. Bingo.

“No! Who the fuck would miss a sad bitch like you?” he growls, sounding seconds away from pitching David’s phone at the wall.

There’s something reaffirming about this. On it’s own, she’s honored to have made Max’s ‘Give A Fuck’ list but there’s also the fact that Max is kinda David’s world and Gwen wants to stay a part of that world. Cement her place in it.

She hears the door open and the sound of David looking for Max. He hisses and then she can hear David chastising Max softly for scaring him. Patrice’s voice chimes in somewhere in the distance and Gwen can’t quite make it out but hears Max tell her to fuck off loud and clear.

“Max! That’s not nice at all,” David say, sounding very much like he’s making his disappointed puppy face. Gwen mentally pours one out for Max; there’s nothing quite like the sting of disappointing someone like David.

“Max,” she says, getting the feeling that they’re about to be cut off. “I miss you too. Good night.”

She’s met with silence and then David is back, telling Max to go wait in the communal room of the cabin.

“Gosh Gwen, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s been like this the last two days,” David says, sighing and Gwen refrains from pointing out that Max has always been a punk because she knows this is different. Takes a little pride in being the source of Max’s deviating delinquency.

Putting him on speaker, she pulls up her bank app.

“Hey, I know you usually wait until the campers are settled before you call,” she says, doing some quick math in her head.

“Maybe let him have the phone before bed?” David finishes and she can hear how bright his smile is. Can picture it and it makes her lower stomach flutter. It’s embarrassing how she would go months without this boy and now a week has her strung.

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t get ideas in your head, Camp Man,” she groans.

“I love you.” He says it so confidently and Gwen thinks she’s going to scream.

“Go put your bitchy son to bed,” she demands, blush setting in. “But hey, I think I’ll come down for the Summer Formal. We’ll be finished with our big project at work by then.”

“Isn’t that a little soon?” he asks, not sounding at all like he minds. It’s not him he’s worried about. Gwen put a lot on the line with this job to get to them before. The last thing he wants, and he’s admitted this to her word for word, is for them to jeopardize her dream.

Gwen’s job means a lot to her. It isn’t exactly something she’d throw away or dismiss without a fantastic reason. She wouldn’t even say that, bar another emergency, she’d drop it without warning just for David and Max.

But Gwen’s an adult, feels more like one every day, and adults get to pick and choose their battles. David and Max are her boys.

“We’ll figure it out,” she promises.

“Sure,” he agrees like he has no doubts they will. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” she answers, dropping her phone on the table when the call disconnects. A familiar combination of exhaustion and just a touch of loneliness creeps up like it always does in the minutes after their call.

She pulls up the calendar on her iPad, swiping to the next month. Right. Not a lot of time to convince her boss that another short vacation is due.

Better get to work.


	6. Camp Activity

Gwen realizes David is plotting something the second he refuses to tell her what he’s thinking.

A default David spills his thoughts like a waterfall, assuming of course that those thoughts are kind, true, and necessary following their most recent attempt at turning these kids into decent people with life lessons that extended far beyond the responsibilities in Gwen’s job description.

Not even kissing that spot behind his ear yields results, although he does sorta melt which is at least very funny.

“David,” she says in the best imitation of her mother’s top-tier parent guilt she can manage, which evidently is pretty damn good since he offers her a pathetically guilty side glance in response.

It’s accented excellently by the blush that has resiliently made camp on David’s face. David, pale white boy David, is the kind of blusher where it concentrates at the bridge of his nose, fading prettily onto his cheeks.

She has enough personal experience to know he has a tendency to flush down his chest too but that’s neither here nor there in the present moment.

“David, you know what happens when one of us tries to plan something without the other getting involved?” Gwen asks.

“It blows up in our face?” he guesses, bottom lip finding its way between his teeth.

“It blows up in our face!” she agrees, scooting to sit on the ottoman in front of him on the couch. Gwen grabs both his hands with her own and David glances down at them before his eyes move back to meet Gwen’s. “We have to be a united front or those fucking monsters out there are going to eat us alive.”

“Aw, Gwen. They’re good kids,” David protests. Gwen resists the urge to roll her eyes but it’s a close one. Best friend or no, she’s pretty sure it’s bad girlfriend etiquette. Then again, playing into David’s inability to lie to get information out of him probably toes some sort of line too.

“I just don’t want you getting in over your head,” she admits softly. Whatever it is he’s been thinking so hard about is bound to end up unappreciated in the best case scenario and in the worst, there’ll be some kind of fire.

David cares so genuinely for the campers and while Gwen is fond of them on a good day, she knows better than to expect anything. It’s unfathomable that David could still be so surprised and hurt by the actions of kids who have proven not to be trusted with something as fragile as someone else’s feelings.

“Have you noticed that during individual camp activities, Max just…sits there?” he asks and it could be a derailing of the conversation but that’s not how David operates.

“We’ve already established Max doesn’t want to be here, David.”

“That’s not true.” He says it so confidently, Gwen almost believes him but she knows given the chance, Max would bolt.

It’s not even that she thinks he wants to be anywhere else; ever since the disaster of Parents’ Day, their biggest little monster had seemed much more subdued. Certainly more receptive to David’s personal brand of smothering attention even if that reception still involved spewing every swear he knew and a few Gwen thinks he might be mispronouncing.

But the reality is that David and Gwen are an extension of Camp Campbell and Camp Campbell is just another reminder of how much bullshit the world could throw you.

At the end of the day, they’re the ones who didn’t realize Max’s form was blank. Gwen herself hadn’t checked Max’s forms since her first year when a quick ‘camp’ had been scrawled onto the camp selection space.

At the time, she’d just laughed and assumed Max’s parents had a wicked sense of humor. David assured her that it had been the same the year before and they’d just kept him occupied with stereotypical camp crafts while the older kids did their specific camp thing.

It’s almost tragic the number of friendship bracelets the poor kid had made before he got to an age where he told them to fuck themselves  _and_  refused to participate in anything they tried to entertain him with.

She’s pretty sure David still had a couple, somewhere back in the apartment.

“Max doesn’t  _want_  a camp, babe,” she says, trying to help him realize before this just ended up breaking his heart. Max was, despite his general unpleasant demeanor, a decent enough kid but he had sharp edges that just didn’t soften. Not like David’s had.

No matter what he said, they weren’t the same.

David looks her in the eyes and the determination she sees there is unlike camp David.

It’s the David who sometimes worked sixty hour weeks to ensure they made rent and walked Gwen to job interviews in the rain after a graveyard shift and two morning classes. It’s the David who got kicked out of his house the second he was legal, surviving on a part time job and his own optimisim.

Gwen doesn’t argue with this David.

“Just because he doesn’t want one doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve one. I’m not stupid, Gwen. I know Max isn’t going to start singing the Camp Campbell anthem and participating in group activities, but we’re getting on in camp. Max  _deserves_  this.”

She suspects there’s more to it than that. Serious David exists to cope with the reality of life and Gwen suspects the harsh reality of life dictates that they might very well lose Max soon if something didn’t give in the tension of his relationship with Camp Campbell.

Gwen realizes she hates the idea of that as much as David does.

“So, what? We’re going to make some sort of Max Camp?” she asks incredulously and sighs when he beams at her. Of fucking course they are. Well fuck. It’s worth a shot. Worse case scenario, she ends up with a weepy boyfriend tomorrow night.

She can’t even imagine what the best case scenario is in this situation.

David disappears the next morning in the camp car and the kids whisper about it all breakfast. After the third separate speculation that David has finally snapped and they’re never seeing him again, Gwen’s ready to pull her hair out. Kids are so dumb sometimes.

“He just went out to grab something, you monsters,” she reassures, ushering them out of the Mess Hall for their individual activities. Nikki bounds out on all fours and immediately scurries up a tree just outside. Gwen sighs.

At least she’ll be easy to keep an eye on from the Mess Hall.

She turns back from the door and sees Max sitting alone at one of the tables. It brings back images of a tiny ball of seven year old glaring at the table with a crayon clenched tightly in his fist.

“Coloring isn’t even a fucking camp activity,  _Gwen_ ,” she recalls him saying with all the spite a seven year old was capable of. Gwen still finds herself surprised by just how much that really is.

David slides up beside her, plastic bag in hand and looking like he’s being made to murder someone. Max finally looks up, eyebrows knitting together when he sees them actively staring at him, suspicion coloring his face when he gets a good look at David’s guilty one.

“The fuck do you two assclowns want?” he asks but it’s more curiosity than hostility so Gwen thinks they’re still in the clear.

“We decided to sign you up for Max Camp,” Gwen says, hating how stupid the words sound when said to the boy himself. Max Camp. David better be right about this.

“I’m not making anymore fucking friendship bracelets. Fuck off,” Max dismisses and Gwen really does roll her eyes this time. When did she decide that all the boys in her life needed to be one extreme or the other.

“David’s going to teach you how to pick a lock,” she corrects, placing a hand on the dip of the other counselor’s lower back and pushing him forward. David stumbles but they both make their way to sit across from Max.

“The fuck? Why is  _David_  teaching me how to pick a lock?” Max asks, hands making their way to dig through the bag David is still clutching to his chest like something precious. Gwen gently smacks them away.

“Because between the two of us, David actually knows  _how_  to pick a lock.”

Max eyes leave the bag and he looks up at them in surprise. Gwen can’t blame him.

“Why?” Max says it with such interest, Gwen for the first time believes this might actually accomplish something.

“Gwen use to get locked out of her house a lot,” David answers and Gwen snorts. Maybe David wasn’t so bad at this lying thing after all, as long as there was fact in the lie.

“Damn, David. Not untrue but not the truth either. Lying to a child,” she teases, instantly feeling bad when his face falls. Sure, the lock picking tutorial had been Gwen’s idea. It’s the first one on one activity she could think of that would hold Max’s interest but David hadn’t been quite this hesitant last night.

A silence falls on them as Max bores a hole in David with his eyes.

“Mr. Campbell taught me,” he admits finally, shoulders slumping and Max’s eyes flash in recognition that he had won. “Because I mentioned sometimes my parents…forgot to leave me a key.” Gwen frowns. That information she hadn’t been privy to.

She hates the way he says ‘forgot’ like he genuinely believes it.

She’d obviously known he could pick locks and he had definitely helped her get into her house more than a handful of times. She’d even known that sleezeball Campbell had been the one to teach him but after meeting the man herself, she had assumed it was just another case of his self-ego boosting bullshit disguised as a considerate act.

“But!” he perks up, pulling out a couple cut-away locks she’s sure must have been dug out of their kitchen island since there’s no chance anyone in Sleepy Peak was dealing in lockpicking tools. “It’s come in handy a lot since then so we’ll call it a survival skill and you’ll promise not to take advantage.”

“Why would I do that?” Max asks, reaching out to grab one of the locks. David places one of his hands over Max’s, trapping it against the table.

“Max.”

They have a stare down but finally, Max groans in defeat.

“Fine, whatever. I bet you don’t even really know what you’re doing but it’s better than that bullshit we use to do.”

David, as in everything, is a wonderful teacher and it’s even easier with Max actually interested in what’s being taught. It doesn’t take him long to demonstrate the technique, giving an in-depth explanation for what’s happening and why that Gwen is certain didn’t extend from Campbell’s lesson years ago.

“Do you remember when we broke into Slotnik’s desk because he took my phone?” Gwen asks as Max settles into practicing with the lock on his own. David flushes but he smiles down at the table.

“Yes. It’s not my proudest moment,” David says, glancing up at her through his eyelashes in a way that is unintentionally obscene. Gwen’s feels her heart beat in her chest.

“Are you two fucking?” Max asks, eyes still trained on where he’s working.

“Max, please,” David chastises in the same moment Gwen says, “So what if we are?”

That draws the boy’s attention and his hands freeze. David is looking too guilty and nervous again and Gwen wants it to stop. She can’t understand where David draws the line with his treatment of Max. It’s so obvious that something with Max is different but she’s getting whiplash with this back and forth of honesty and professional detachment.

Max stares for a moment, seemingly working something through his mind.

“Is it…a new thing?” he asks and Gwen gets the feeling the answer is more important than they know. Max is naturally nosy but it seems like he takes what they do more personally than any of the campers. Gwen doesn’t know if it’s because they’re adults or because something with David is different for Max too.

“Yes. But Gwen and I have been friends for a long time, Max,” David answers honestly and Gwen can’t quite pick out what part of that was the right answer but the concern on Max’s face softens. He nods and goes back to his task, little demon grin emerging as he manages to successfully unlock the lock.

“Can I ask one more question?” he asks and David looks exhausted but Max rarely asks permission for anything.

“Yes, Max,” David says with all the patience in the world.

“Does this mean Gwen thinks you look like a fish?”

She can’t help it. David looks so overwhelmed and it’s more of a dig at her than anything but she bursts into loud, wheezing laughter that draws the attention of the campers closest to the Mess Hall. They pile in, curious as to what set Gwen off and made David look so unhappy.

God, if this kid didn’t watch it, Gwen wasn’t going to be able to let him go.

She refuses to admit she may already be there.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](www.mister-honeynuts.tumblr.com).


End file.
